Sunday, 28 December 2008

What can one say?

8 comments:

Fascism requires a top-down commitment across all levels of society that would be visible in every school (not just a rural one). I think that would push this nationalistic video into a fascist element.

That said, if you feel that certain education precincts within Japan that had books that place WWII as foreigner faults as fascist (with Rape of Nanjing never happening), then it would be hard to debate this point.

Perhaps, but it is certainly from such building blocks that a fascist state is created. My question is not "what is China" (although this is a good question, and not one that I or anyone else is close to answering) but "what is China becoming?".

Many things can make a building blocks to form a fascist state, but does not mean it is or will be one. Would you say that the Bush Administration's use of putting an American citizen into jail on the order of the President with no charges for years as a building block towards Fascism? You may, but I believe that it has to be combined with a variety of things on all levels. (Keep in mind that this does not mean it is no less scary in either accounts.)

"What is China becoming?" is a good question alright--a video like that definitely puts a pause in one's mind about the ideological direction of the country. Then again, I feel that China's use of nationalism is a double-edge sword that could very easily come back to bite them.

@Demerzel - The author of "It could happen here" had a point - and I certainly do think that the US torture program has been an incredibly disturbing and disgraceful development. However, I am also familiar with the forces in US society (and for that matter, in Japanese society) that counter-act radical nationalism. In China's case, however, it seems that nationalists are pushing against an open door. The only force capable of standing against nationalism is the Communist party, and although they have acted to curb some of the excesses of the nationalists (by, for example, threatening Nanjing students who sought to join the 2005 anti-Japanese demonstrations with explusion) they have, in the main, followed the flow.

An explicitly fascist government could never appear in any but the most backward of countries, but it is entirely possibly that through the adoption of nationalist rhetoric by the CCP in an effort to remain relevant, China could become a fascist state in all but name - it is most of the way there already. Were the rhetoric we see in this video to become general, I think we could say that it had arrived.

I agree to most of that with the exception of how Fascism arrives into a the most backward of countries. Japan, Germany, Spain, and Italy were all Democratic (or Republic at least) societies that became Fascist regimes. You would find very few poor countries that became Fascist--those mostly became Communist or Authoritarian.

I guess I forgot to include the 'nowadays' in that sentence - I cannot believe that an explicitly fascist party could come to power in any major industrialised country nowadays - the examples of history are too strong. By this I mean a government that calls itself fascist, not merely one that is.